After reading the article "School board labors over deficit control" by Herald reporter Erica Earl, I am reminded of that old joke about Casey Stengel, the long-ago manager of the New York Yankees.

After losing a game caused by his team making many errors, he got the boys together and asked, "Is there anybody here who knows how to play this game?"

I think the taxpaying public is now wondering if the former school board and the former school administrators ever learned how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, and had they ever heard the word budget. Did they think "balanced budget" were two dirty words that should never be used in any kind of public discussion or did they just not know what they meant?

Let's face it: If all the information in Erica Earl's article had been known before the last election, I think there would be a few different faces on the Manatee County school board.